Well, the first thing we can remove from the list is buying a new computer. I went for broke last August and bought a low-end computer. (like I said, neither of us are rich :^) I've gone through a couple of minor upgrades, but it's still not all that spectacular:
As I said, nothing spectacular. The one thing that was definitely out of the picture was buying a new system. Nope, can't do it. I also didn't have an older system that could run Linux or Windows: I bought this system when my old '486 got fried by lightning. This left me with two choices:
1. Suffer
2. Get a life
3. Come up with another solution
Not liking the first two solutions :^) I decided to go with three. After some brainstorming, I realized that I had an old Tandy 1000 EX in my closet.